Cheap Snorkel?

The other relevant point for I assume all D4's owners and most D3 owners is that you/we have spend north of $70 -$80 k on our pride and joy.

Here we are discussing the merits of saving a few hundred $ for a piece of equipment that could potentially be the difference between killing an engine or at least seriously stuffing it if it failed.

Now I am all for shopping around to get the best price but as ADMIRAL said you get what you pay for, and in my limited experience with most things cheap and Chinese the thrill of saving a few bucks wears off when it stops working prematurely and you end up buying the properly made one anyway.

It would be a Safari snorkel or LR RAI from me if I purchase one.

Just my $0.02 worth.

George

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Originally Posted by DiscoWeb

It would be a Safari snorkel or LR RAI from me if I purchase one.

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Couldn't agree more

This is a very interesting conversation. I fitted an Airflow Snorkel on my last 4WD which was a good unit, but real pain to install. This time for the Disco 3, I went to ARB and got the Safari one fitted. Why? Pretty simple - have a look at the installation instructions on the Safari website. They are detailed and brilliant. This gave me confidence that they had done their research well. The snorkel fits well, there is very little wind noise, only a tiny loss of vision, and it's a locally designed product. It's not worth trying to save a few dollars on a cheaper copy.

I cannot remember what make snorkel I had but I bought it from TJM. I fitted it myself to a Toyota Hilux and took special care in fitting the snorkel. I notice where it entered the airbox there was a 5mm gap all the way round which I filled with high temperature sealant. The original fitting air inlet was higher up, so without the sealant I would have been worse off. The instruction made no mention of sealant and no sealant was provided in the kit. Who knows if a TJM installer would have used any sealant?
Just my opinion if you not doing deep water crossing a snorkel is not worth the money. I notice no so called RAM EFFECT and the air filter didn’t seem to be any cleaner, mind I did not do much dusty driving.

Hi all, just interested to know if anyone has noticed any slight perfomance gains from fitting a snorkel.
I did with my LC100 but I did the K & N air filter at the same time.
Cheers, Craig

The K&N filter alone would have resulted in a noticeable improvement in performance.
I installed same to both a R51 Pathie & a XR6 Turbo Falcon. I dynoed the XR6T during each modification I made, and the K&N filter resulted in an additional 9 rwkw - a significant improvement.

I dont think K&N's are a good idea on 4bys used off road.
I have had two engines die prematurely, both using K&N's
They increase performance by reducing restriction of air flow. The restriction of air flow imo is due to reduced filtration. On the road it doesn't make to much difference. Off road in fine dust it is a problem. Also consider the ease at which you can change out a paper filter when remote.

Agree with trobbo about K&N they are on road performance filters.

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Originally Posted by trobbo

Also consider the ease at which you can change out a paper filter when remote.

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Or how easy it is to give a paper one a shake or blow off the dust to get you going again.

A general comment about the disco Filters.
Last year I went through a huge dust storm on the track through Walker's crossing on the way to Innaminka from Birdsville. Vision was down to about 10 metres and at times we could not see the track at all. The storm lasted about 2 hours of driving time. We had never been in anything like it.
I had no snorkel at that time. When we camped at Innaminka that night, I removed the air cleaner box, cleaned the filter and tipped out the sand and dust. There was surprisingly little - nowhere near what I had expected. My mate with a Patrol and snorkel had more dust than I did.
So, although I got a snorkel now,(for water crossings) the standard set-up is pretty amazing for dust and normal use. If you are not going to do water crossings, I would question whether to bother with a snorkel or LR raised air inlet.

I agree too re the K&N.
I will not be using one in the D4. I'll stick with paper.

Something to note with K&N or any other oiled foam/cotton filter: you don't need to over oil them to still get an oil film over everything on the engine side of the filter. The XR6T I had suffered the effects of this oil film on the fly-by-wire throttle position sensors. Resulted in an intermittent rough idle fault. Required periodic dismantling of the intake piping for a degreasing...